Tuesday, January 08, 2013

Shifting The Focus

The audit is out, the verdict is damning. As reported by CBC News, an independent assessment of six years of transactions on the troubled Attawapiskat First Nation reserve reveal “no evidence of due diligence.”

Auditors Deloitte and Touche concluded that out of 505 transactions,
“an average of 81 per cent of files did not have adequate supporting
documents and over 60 per cent had no documentation of the reason for
payment.”

The argument is, "those who can't control their finances deserve no sympathy." Let's recall that, when the crisis erupted at Attawapiskat last year, Stephen Harper's solution was to send in an accountant. Let's also recall that, eighteen months ago, the Harper government was found in contempt of Parliament for not revealing the cost of jet fighters and prisons. Now they refuse to let Kevin Page see the budget cuts they are making.

Worse still, the Harperites claim that natives peoples' inability to account for their spending makes them the source of their misery. Rather than seeing the audit as a symptom, the government claims it is a cause. Ultimately, the Conservatives say, Canada's native peoples seek to hide and avoid the truth.

Does anyone really believe the PM has had a conversion on the road to
Attawapiskat? How long will he contribute to the working session? Does
anyone think Chief Spence’s call for action will be answered by anything
other than the bureaucratic sludge in which these events are normally
embalmed?

What Idle No More is asking for is changes in Bill C-45, the omnibus budget bill which has gutted Canada's environmental legislation:

The Harper government has unilaterally changed the Indian Act. It has
unilaterally changed environmental legislation that weakens protection
of fresh water and endangered fish species. It has made it easier for
major developments to take place with less study of the environmental
impact and no equal say for aboriginals. And in 2012, the very year
Stephen Harper pledged to renew the search for justice for all native
peoples, his “little minister” — as Chief Spence described John Duncan —
announced sweeping cuts for core aboriginal organizations across
Canada.

No one in Canada knows better than its aboriginals that a moment of
truth has arrived for both them and the land. For good or ill, an
explosion of development quivers over the West and the Arctic. Huge
fortunes will be made by a few, great change will be ushered in, and the
environment will be altered forever. Either the aboriginals make their
stand now, or they will be eternally bypassed. As Grand Chief Stewart
Phillip put it, “We’re the last line of defence between the country’s
resources and a federal government that wants to open it up and
devastate it.”

This is, indeed, a last stand. We used to believe that the land will endure. But, if Stephen Harper gets his way, the land will be despoiled for profits -- and those profits will not be shared with the people of the land. To do that, Harper must shift the focus. That is what he and his acolytes are now trying to do.

4 comments:

While I don't think that any possible financial improprieties should be ignored, Owen, reading the Harper assertions reminds me of when I used to teach fallacies of reasoning as a supplement to Orwell's "Politics and the English Language."

The release of the information so close to a meeting with the Aboriginals would seem to be an attempt to undermine the credibility of Chief Spence and the cause she represents. A form of ad hominem, it probably comes closest to 'poisoning the well,' which Wikepedia defines in the following way:

"Poisoning the well (or attempting to poison the well) is a rhetorical device where adverse information about a target is pre-emptively presented to an audience, with the intention of discrediting or ridiculing everything that the target person is about to say."

So reminiscent, isn't it, of the sleazy characterization of Jack Layton as Taliban Jack? I suspect it will be a long time before the Harper regime has finished deploying its weaponry of denunciation and debasement of its many opponents.

Our Aboriginal "cousins" are fighting the battle for the environment for all of us. (I prefer cousin to brother for no one would treat a brother as badly as First Nation's people have been treated and many are still treated) I support their cause for it is our cause. I live on a waterway, (the Temagami river) which is no longer protected. I was once told by the police that I could not swim in it naked as it was a public thoroughfare and someone might come floating down it and take offence. I guess it is no longer a public thoroughfare and could become a private corporation's sewer. In farm company it was quite often the practice to place the barn such that livestock waste went downstream for the next fellow to deal with and water was drawn from the river upstream for this abuse.Hopefully we have learned something since then. But maybe not which is why we need regulations to protect out waterways and the environment. I am particularly a lover of rivers. We, even with regulations, have a abused our water resources. Water is our most precious natural resources and should not be easily sacrificed to corporate interests.

I can still drink the wonderful water directly from the Temagami. Sadly you cannot say that about too many of our rivers.

About Me

A retired English teacher, I now write about public policy and, occasionally, personal experience. I leave it to the reader to determine if I practice what I preached to my students for thirty-two years.